A Calling to Serve

Growing up in Honduras, Rossangela Padilla Cabrera and her family fled their homeland after being threatened by gangs. Her father, a physician who operated an HIV clinic, also performed laser tattoo removal in prisons. The work made him a target, and there were multiple threats on his life and the lives of his wife and three children.

The family sought asylum in the United States and arrived in Pennsylvania with help from a missionary group. The events instilled in Padilla Cabrera an abiding philosophy: Keep moving forward.

“That’s been my life’s mantra,” she says. “Keep going, despite the circumstances you’re given.”

That mantra carried her through military training and a rigorous STEM major. Today, Padilla Cabrera is a biology major and aspiring doctor at New York Tech, which she chose for its academics and scholarship support, but also for its proximity to world-class hospitals and medical institutions.

A love of athletics and medicine—fueled by her father’s example and a program in high school where she shadowed athletic trainers, physical therapists, and orthopedic surgeons—led Padilla Cabrera to enlist in the U.S. Army Reserve at 17 and later became a female combat medic. “I had a lot of energy growing up, so I naturally gravitated toward sports,” she says. “I also fell in love with medicine in high school, so I thought the Army could be fun—and a way to get money for school.”

Padilla Cabrera has served on active duty in San Antonio, Texas, and at Fort Dix in New Jersey, and continues to serve during the school year while keeping up with her New York Tech studies.

This past July, during Operation Sentinel Justice at Camp Shelby in Mississippi, she faced her first life-or-death patient. When a limp body was dragged out of an LMTV, a military cargo truck, Padilla Cabrera pulled the soldier out of danger, yelled orders, and treated her in a stressful, unpredictable environment, stabilizing her before sending her on to the next echelon of care.

“I remember the fear in the soldier’s voice calling for a medic,” she says. “I felt the weight of a real casualty relying on me to survive. Watching her come back to life came with relief and a surge of adrenaline that confirmed this was my calling.”

By the time she graduates, Padilla Cabrera expects to have completed her six-year obligation as a reservist. She then hopes to pursue a medical school scholarship through the military’s Health Professions Scholarship Program. Her sister is finishing an Army orthopedic specialist program this year; her brother, also in the service, was recently accepted to medical school. Although she initially considered emergency medicine or orthopedic surgery, Padilla Cabrera remains open to career prospects.

“The more I learn, the more eager I am to continue learning,” she says.

That mindset is influenced in no small part by New York Tech, where she found a home in the Honors College. The experience was eye-opening, broadening her perspective beyond science and medicine and toward global challenges.

Drawing from the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, she researched how climate change is shifting malaria transmission patterns and how resources could be redistributed to reach underserved communities.

The Honors College, along with military and community organizations, has afforded her other opportunities. Padilla Cabrera will represent New York Tech at the 2027 Student Veterans of America National Conference in Texas, after representing the university in Colorado last year at a national conference for student veterans. On campus, she’s treasurer of the New York Tech chapter of the Student Veterans of America.

The experiences have reinforced her determination to seek new challenges and push herself past her limits. This fall, Padilla Cabrera will run her first marathon, the 2026 TIAA Philadelphia Marathon.

“Since I was fortunate enough to find refuge in the United States, I owe it to myself, my family, and those coming behind me to relentlessly pursue success,” she says. “I earned scholarships. I earned leadership positions. I don’t just take opportunities; I find them and share them.”

Years after fleeing Central America, Padilla Cabrera is reflective. She understands that her family’s survival depended on the generosity and intervention of others. It’s shaped within her a deep sense of responsibility. She hopes to pay it forward by improving the health of others.

“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for the service of others,” she says. “I can only hope my intervention has half the impact others had on me.”

For anyone following in her footsteps, her advice is simple: “All it takes is one person to believe you can. Sometimes the only person who has to believe it is you.”

By Andrew Faught